INDUSTRY

PathScale, developer of innovative software and hardware solutions to accelerate the performance and efficiency of Linux clusters, today announced that Voltaire is adding the PathScale InfiniPath HTX InfiniBand adapter to its solutions portfolio as one of the InfiniBand adapters offered with its high-performance multi-service InfiniBand switches. This is the latest in a series of developments that demonstrate how PathScale InfiniPath has become the high-performance InfiniBand interconnect of choice for performance-minded cluster users. "This agreement between PathScale and Voltaire marks InfiniBand technology's coming of age," observed Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at the industry research firm Insight 64. "Now the market will be served by multiple vendors offering customers a range of price/performance alternatives. PathScale's innovative marriage of InfiniBand and HyperTransport technology provides a low-latency interconnect that makes clusters of 64-bit x86 systems an even more cost-effective approach for high-performance computing applications." PathScale InfiniPath, available as both an adapter card and as an ASIC, is the industry's highest performance Linux cluster interconnect for message passing (MPI) and TCP/IP applications. The ultra-low latency, high-effective bandwidth and unprecedented messaging rate of the PathScale InfiniPath HTX InfiniBand adapter greatly improve MPI application performance and Linux cluster utilization. InfiniPath delivers superior interconnect performance at commodity price levels by implementing a high-performance software stack and by connecting directly to the AMD Opteron processor via a standard HyperTransport HTX slot. When integrated with Voltaire's InfiniBand-based switching solutions, InfiniPath enables applications to reliably scale to hundreds or thousands of nodes. One of the first Voltaire customers to take delivery of the PathScale InfiniPath adapter is the Sandia National Laboratory's research facility in Livermore, CA. According to Dr. Matt Leininger, computational scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, "We see Voltaire's collaboration with PathScale as a very positive development that will make it easier for us to build extremely large InfiniBand-based clusters based on the OpenIB software stack. The ability to couple the PathScale InfiniBand adapter to Hypertransport has some significant advantages in terms of latency and effective bandwidth for many of our complex applications such as structure mechanics, computational fluid dynamics and combustion codes. PathScale's support for OpenIB is a critical requirement for us." Voltaire provides a complete family of grid backbone solutions including the Voltaire Grid Director ISR 9288, the industry's most scalable, multi-service switch for building high-performance clusters and grids ranging from tens to thousands of nodes. Voltaire multi-service switches offer integrated InfiniBand, GbE and Fibre Channel connectivity and are deployed successfully in some of the world's largest supercomputers and grids. To deliver complete cluster solutions to customers, Voltaire has established OEM agreements with leading server vendors IBM, HP, SGI, and strategic sales relationships with Sun, NEC and Hitachi. "The addition of the PathScale InfiniPath HTX adapter to the Voltaire product portfolio is a clear indicator that the InfiniBand market is expanding, giving customers greater capabilities," said Ronnie Kenneth, chairman and CEO, Voltaire. "The PathScale InfiniBand adapter is a complement to Voltaire's end-to-end grid solutions and will help our customers achieve superior performance for their mission-critical applications." PathScale recently published new InfiniPath performance results including the Pallas Benchmark Suite and the HPC Challenge Benchmarks that validate PathScale InfiniPath as the industry's highest performance commodity cluster interconnect for Linux-based HPC applications. These results can be viewed at its Web site. "Voltaire has been very successful in selling its InfiniBand products into high-performance computing and grid deployments and has a strong reputation for meeting the needs of the most demanding customers," said Scott Metcalf, CEO of PathScale. "By being the first major InfiniBand switch vendor to add the industry-leading PathScale InfiniPath HTX adapter to its product line as a high-performance, ultra low-latency HCA offering, Voltaire enables its customers to dramatically improve the performance of Linux-based applications and the efficiency of Linux clusters."